Web store chain Coolblue sees sales rise by 48%

Another
hundred shops

Coolblue
serves as an umbrella for a series of over a hundred specialised
online stores, each with a Dutch and a Belgian counterpart. In 2013
Coolblue hopes to add another hundred shops to that list.

Founder
Pieter Zwart, who started the company in 1999, sees this strategy of
focusing on one specific product per shop as one of the reasons for
their growth: “With our specialised shops we are extremely relevant
to our customers.” They find themselves “in a true product
Walhalla”, he believes.

New
warehouse and three physical shops

To cope with
this growth, a new warehouse of 11,000 m² will be opened in the
first quarter of 2013, near Tilburg. That extra space is added to
the 5,000 m² warehouse of Coolblue in Capelle aan den IJssel, near
Rotterdam.

In addition
to its web shops Coolblue also has four physical stores, in the Dutch
cities Rotterdam, Eindhoven and Groningen and the Belgian hub
Antwerp. In these stores, customers can get information, place orders
and return articles. Early 2013 another store is opening in Lochristi
(near Ghent in Belgium), while later this year Amsterdam and Utrecht
will follow suit.

The strong
expansion of the chain in 2012 also created more jobs, mainly because
of the new administrative office in Rotterdam. All together the company created 140 new jobs, lifting the total payroll over 300
people.

Customer
satisfaction at all time high

More
positive news came from the Net Promotor Score, an indicator of
customer satisfaction that shows to which extent customers would
recommend a certain company, product or service to others (friends,
colleagues, family,…). The difference in percentage between
‘promoters’ and ‘critics’ is then calculated, which left Coolblue
with a record positive difference of 62.

One service
that was added in 2012 to increase customer satisfaction, was
Coolblue VandaagNog: customers who orders before 3 p.m. can get their
product delivered on the same evening, for an additional fee of 17.95
euro. Not
surprisingly, Coolblue has received best web shop awards in 2012, in
Belgium as well as in The Netherlands.  (YVL)